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Do you have and external HDD that you use primary to store your files such as your movies, music and games but it doesn’t tend to get disconnected from that USB 2.0 cable that runs to the pc?

You may run into the same problem I did where the power supply breaks and you have a drive sitting there with gigabytes of data on it you cant touch, well there is good news you can strip it out of its case though don’t get scared essentially its just an internal HDD in a case.

First open up the case, strip it out until there is just a PCB (printed circuit board) chip connected to the SATA and power pin connectors, just slide it off and then you have an internal HDD.

Now if you don’t have a spare SATA connection or a Power connection temporarily you can disconnect the DVD drive and plug its connectors in to the stripped HDD, you must disconnect the SATA cable from SATA 2 in most cases on the mother board and plug into a slave like ports 3 and 4 the last 2 ports.

In most cases after this you should be set to boot the machine though if the machine doesn’t recognize the HDD then you may have to set a Jumper, On the HDD there is jumper pins next to the SATA and Power connectors you may have to put a jumped on to the slave connectors.

This process is very beneficial as you can go to the local technology store and pick up a 1TB external for around $100, that’s very cheap it can save money by buying it in an external case, then you may have a 200GB 3.5” HDD lying around you can always plug that in and have a spare 200GB backup drive.

Note that this process is done on a 3.5” and not a 2.5” HDD to use the slimmer 2.5” HDD you need an adapter they are very cheap and widely available online, I recommend looking on eBay.